Thank you!

Thanks to your advocacy efforts on our behalf, we're happy to report that the recently passed Omnibus Spending Bill includes a very small increase in funding for the National Endowment for the Humanities! While our work is not over with regards to the upcoming 2018 budget to be passed in the fall, the Omnibus Spending Bill represents an endorsement of the important work that the humanities do for our communities. These funds will continue to support our work of providing free access to authoritative content about Virginia's history and culture.

Primary Resource

Share It

In this advertisement, published on the front
page of the Philadelphia Gazette and Universal Daily
Advertiser, on May 24, 1796, President George Washington seeks the return of his
fugitive slave Oney Judge.
Frederick Kitt, who placed the ad, was steward of the President's House in
Philadelphia. Some spelling has been modernized.

Transcription from Original

Advertisement.

ABSCONDED from the household of the President of the United States, ONEY JUDGE, a
light mulatto girl, much freckled, with very black eyes and bushy black hair, she is
of middle stature, slender, and delicately formed about 20 years of age.

She has many changes of good clothes of all sorts, but they are not sufficiently recollected to be
described—As there was no suspicion of her going off, nor no provocation to do so, it
is not easy to conjecture whither she has gone, or fully, what her design is—but as
she may attempt to escape by water, all masters of vessels are cautioned against
admitting her into them, although it is probably she will attempt to pass for a free
woman, and has, it is said, wherewithal to pay her passage.

Ten dollars will be paid to any person who will bring her home, if taken in the city,
or on board any vessel in the harbour;—and a reasonable additional sum if apprehended
and brought from a greater distance, and in proportion to that distance.